There’s something about this Jason Calcanis interview of Ted Murphy (founder of PayPerPost) that makes us cringe. The very idea of masking paid product placements as genuine blog posts flies squarely in the face of what we as writers and you as readers enjoy about the blog experience. What’s more, this cryptic and deceptive practice threatens the blogospehere as a whole. It’s already starting to make readers nervous– we can sense it. Murphy can twist words and definitions around, argue ‘efficient market outcome,’ ‘personal empowerment,’ etc. to justify what they do, but be sure they’ll never make believers out of us. As a reflection of our love for the unadulterated blogosphere, and as a gesture of respect to all of our readers, we promise to remain transparent (i.e. if we ever have a financial connection to the subject of a post, we’ll disclose it) and continue with the level of integrity upon which we’ve always prided ourselves. The last thing we want to do is fall on this slippery slope toward the fall of the blogs– it saddens, upsets and infuriates us.